No quick fix for ravaged roads in Fitchburg

FITCHBURG -- The city is gearing up for this year's round of road repairs and repaving, but don't expect pristine roads anytime soon.

Repairing every road with a Pavement Condition Index grade of 50 or below on a zero to 100 scale would cost the city $75 million, according to an estimate generated by the Department of Public Works.

That's the cost of 455 single family homes in Fitchburg, 2.4 library renovations or over half the city's entire fiscal year 2017 budget.

"The issue is there's not enough money to do all the streets," At-Large City Councilor Jeffrey Bean said.

And with 238 miles of road, 180 of it city owned, the city will continue to fall behind at current funding rates, according to Commissioner of Public Works Lenny Laakso.

Click here for the map of Fitchburg road conditions.

"We would need to pave about nine miles per year to keep up with it," he wrote in an email. "With rising costs and less money available for paving our streets inevitably fall into worse conditions."

Most of the funding for road paving comes from Chapter 90 funds from the state.

Annually, this is enough to pave about two and a half miles of road depending on the type. Country roads cost less than main thoroughfares, which need extra features like aprons and curbs, Laakso said.

This year the city will receive $1.1 million in Chapter 90 funds, enough to pave the following, preliminary project list:

* Princeton Road from Authority Drive to the railroad bridge

* Falulah Street from the F.W. Webb Company to Benson Street

* Franklin Road from Electric Avenue to Nikitas Field

* St. Joseph Avenue from Daniels Street to Oakhill Road

* Belmont Street from Capone Street to Romano Avenue

* Main Street from School Street to Rollstone Boulder

* Autumn Drive from Shea Street to 64 Autumn Drive

Laakso said the DPW selects which roads to pave based on their condition and use, or average number of trips.

The condition of each road is rated by city engineers during a survey conducted roughly every four years. Each is given a score, zero being the worst and 100 being the best, based on cracking, corrugation, trenching and pot holes.

"The range from zero to 50 is generally considered to be poor," he said in an interview. "(About) 60 to 65 might be fair and the next range might be good and the upper range in the 90s is excellent."

An updated road survey is about two-thirds done and will be completed in the next several months, Laakso said.

In 2012, the date of the most recent survey, 64 percent of roads, some which were divided into shorter segments for the survey, have a PCI of 50 or below. Of those, 18 see greater than 10,000 trips in an average day.

Those 18 make up half of all high traffic road segments graded by the survey, but only 2 percent of the city's roads.

Mayor Stephen DiNatale said the city combines paving with an "aggressive" crack sealing program. The city fills potholes using about $200,000 per year out of its own budget, Laakso said.

Pavement stays in "serviceable condition" for about 20 years and the city is looking into ways to extend a road's lifetime, he said.

"This week, we began crack sealing a number of streets to keep water from penetrating pavement that was placed in the last six years," he said in an email.

"There are other methods such as microsurfacing, which is a thin layer placed on top of a street that is still in good condition, to make the street last longer."

Chapter 90 funds are sometimes supplemented by other projects in the city that include paving. This year, like last year, the city has a number of these projects, meaning more roads will be paved than a typical year, Laakso said.

A state MassWorks grant will fund work on River Street and the roundabout at the intersection of River, Main and Chestnut. Federal grants will fund paving and other work on potions of South Street and Summer Street.

Money from the planning board, Fitchburg State University and a municipal sewer project will fund the installation of a roundabout on Rollstone Street and Electric Avenue and paving on portions of Congress, Pearl, Cedar, Pacific, Culley and East streets.

The city, however, does not directly pay for paving through municipal funds, which is something At-Large Councilor Marcus DiNatale would like to see change.

"There is no long term plan because the plan would be largely if not entirely contingent on financial resources in order to enact that plan," he said.

"We are basically, like every other city in this part of the state, at the behest at the state of Massachusetts who provides us our sole source of funding for road improvement."

Finding municipal dollars to supplement state funding is not a new idea. In 2011 former Mayor Lisa Wong brought to city council a plan for a $5 million debt exclusion to repave roads, which would have added added $35 annually to the average resident's tax bill for 10 years.

In a 7-3 vote, city council voted against placing the measure on the ballot. Only former councilor Kevin Starr and current councilors Joel Kaddy and David Clark voted in favor.

Councilor DiNatale was among the opposing voices at the time -- he wanted to see the city use money from its own budget before asking taxpayers -- but since then his opposition to the plan, though still not his first choice, has waned.

"The longer this goes on the council may have no choice but to put a vote to the residents," he said. "I voted against it because I didn't believe the city had exercised all it could at that time."

Last year voters in Lunenburg voted in favor of a similar plan -- a 15-year $4 million debt exclusion that would cost the average homeowner $1,099 over that time and fund ongoing road maintenance to keep the roads at a PCI of 70 or above.

Councilor DiNatale believes the best answer isn't a debt exclusion, but utilizing some of the available funds left over from the year's budget to fund paving. This money must be appropriated by the Mayor's office, not council, but the councilor said mayors, at least in the last 20 years, have never brought this allocation request before council.

Mayor DiNatale said he plans to change this trend.

"I'm making an effort to try to use available funds to add to the (repaving) process," he said.

He said he had not yet decided how much of this year's 4.7 million in available funds will go toward repaving.

Bean said a third option could be to take out a loan to repave the roads, but DiNatale said upcoming capital improvement needs such as city hall, school and library renovations, makes this impractical.

"In order to make a noticeable impact on the condition of the roads it would probably cost $10 million," he said. "Right now we've got capital needs."

As they are now, the roads are "by and large abysmal," Councilor DiNatale said.

"We're so behind the eight ball on this one as are most cities and towns."

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sentinel and Enterprise. So keep it civil.